Help Please! :S

Hi Everyone.
I have an iMac, and recently over the past about 3 days the screen has been turning grey, and a message box appearing saying that I must turn of the computer and re start it.
I am not sure what this is, and can't find any advice on the Apple website or anywhere else online - hence why I have come here!
This has happened about 4-5 tomes over the past about 3 days, and it is starting to worry me slightly.

Would you be able to advise as to what steps I should take from now to fix this?

Have you upgraded the computer in some way recently...like installed new software or hardware (ram, hard drive, etc.)?

- Nick

- Too many "beachballs", read this: Beachballs- Computer seems slower than it used to? Read this for some slow computer tips: Speedup- Almost full hard drive? Some solutions. Out of Space- Apple Battery Info. Battery

No - have not installed anything at all. The only thing I can think of being the problem was having an unexpected power-cut the other day. Should that make any difference?

Always possible. If the power-outage you had the other day caused a problem (unlikely...but always possible)...if the hardware got damaged in some way...that could cause the kernel panics.

Kernel panics MANY times are hardware related...and in many of these cases it's due to "bad ram". That's why I was asking if you had done any upgrading recently.

But to be honest...solving kernel panics can be very difficult (especially if you have done nothing to the computer in terms of upgrades). If the computer has always run fine (for weeks, months, years)...and no upgrades of any sort have been done to it recently...then this would lead me to believe that something more serious has gone wrong with the hardware (some sort of spontaneous hardware failure).

Now if something recently has been done to this computer (which is why I asked above)...then that change/upgrade could point us into a direction to investigate.

- Nick

- Too many "beachballs", read this: Beachballs- Computer seems slower than it used to? Read this for some slow computer tips: Speedup- Almost full hard drive? Some solutions. Out of Space- Apple Battery Info. Battery

USe the Snow Leopard disc as you cannot repair a drive you are booted from. Pop in the disc, reboot and hold down 'C' immediately after the chime, go to Utilities in the Menu bar, Select Disk Utility > Repair Disk and see what is reported.

Hang on to those original install discs like grim death! Using OS X.7 or later make a bootable USB thumb drive before running Installer!

USe the Snow Leopard disc as you cannot repair a drive you are booted from. Pop in the disc, reboot and hold down 'C' immediately after the chime, go to Utilities in the Menu bar, Select Disk Utility > Repair Disk and see what is reported.

I have done this, and there were about 5 problems that were in red, and at the end of it, it said that all had been repaired successfully.

The kernel panic has happened about twice more since the disk repair. Any ideas now?!

If this is any help, whenever Time Machine tries to back up, it fails, and then I get the kernel panic?!

Can't help with TM personally prefer SuperDuper as a backup which is bootable. Is TM being installed on an external drive? If so with the drive connected, go into Disk Utility in Utilities, highlight it and run Repair Disk and see what is reported. It may be that the external, if any, is failing, causing these problems.

HDD can be faulty even when received brand new. Several reasons for this including handling, storage and even quality control in China where most are manufactured.

Hang on to those original install discs like grim death! Using OS X.7 or later make a bootable USB thumb drive before running Installer!